Pakistanis on the whole are realistic about their own problems.
LONDON: This is with reference to Ejaz Haider’s article of July 29 titled “India is the revisionist power”. Pakistanis on the whole are more realistic about their own problems whilst Indians I have found (certainly on internet forums) think their problems are halwa. But this may be because Indian trolls and fundamentalists dominate cyber discussions.
Anyway, we shouldn’t take Mr Haider’s word for it, we can listen to what Indian intellectual Pankaj Mishra has to say: “Certainly, an unblinkered vision of South Asia would feature a country whose fanatically ideological government in 1998 conducted nuclear tests, threatened its neighbour with an all-out war and, four years later, presided over the massacre of 2,000 members of a religious minority. Long embattled against secessionist insurgencies on its western and eastern borders, the ‘flailing’ state of this country now struggles to contain a militant movement in its heartland. It is also where thousands of women are killed every year for failing to bring sufficient dowry and nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in the previous decade”
Doesn’t India support the Burmese Junta, which commits terrible atrocities against its own people? Also, I was impressed that the Indian parliament matched the antics of our own parliament when I read a report that 128 of the 543 members of the last Lok Sabha faced criminal charges, ranging from murder to human trafficking. So one in five of India’s lawmakers faces criminal charges — shining India indeed.
AAK
Published in The Express Tribune, July 31st, 2011.
